


Small Time

by gentle_herald



Category: Henry V (1989), Henry V - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst and Feels, Death is a character, Exeter deserves so much love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9256886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentle_herald/pseuds/gentle_herald
Summary: You do not under any circumstances, except by His Grace’s direct command, touch the King. Montjoy freezes, hand half extended to catch up Henry’s. He steps back and listens to the low hum and stamp of men and horses outside and to Henry’s painfully shallow, ragged breathing.August 31, 1422. Henry is dying of dysentery.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Small time, but in that small most greatly lived  
> This star of England: Fortune made his sword;  
> By which the world's best garden be achieved,  
> And of it left his son imperial lord.  
> Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King  
> Of France and England, did this king succeed...  
> \- Henry V, Epilogue

The campaign tent is dim, stifling, its door hooked firmly shut against gossip about the King’s state. This only incites further gossip, of course, but Exeter decided three days ago that the men’s mutterings can’t be worse than the truth. Henry – it pains Exeter to think the words, though he is more soldier than courtier and has small patience for dissembling – is dying. He stands guard: immovable outside the command tent. No one goes in to see the king except with his favour. It’s always been this way: Exeter as his king’s first line of defense, his staunchest supporter, his near father; but against dysentery there is little anyone can do. 

Inside, a brace of candles flicker in an iron sconce. The brazier in the centre of the room is unneeded and then begged for as Henry’s fever rises. He tosses on the cot and lies still, flushed and sweating. A priest bows perfunctorily to Exeter, slips past his protective stance, and enters, bringing incense and holy oil. Exeter knows why he’s here; Exeter called him. Exeter looks out over the camp and thinks of the glory being so rudely felled. He nearly weeps. He takes three steps away from his station by the tent door: still close enough to protect his Harry, but enough distance for discretion: this will be Henry’s last confession. There is a low murmur of Latin from the inside of the tent. Rain keeps on sodding down. 

Henry blinks; forces his eyes to remain open and focused on the priest. He knows this man: the priest has been a chaplain in his household since he set sail for England that first time. Henry asked for him by name; the priest knows him well and can hear what he has to say. What he has never said out loud before. 

Every part of Henry’s body hurts; the pain is distracting. He wants to be quiet and alone, but a king is never alone. Through the throbbing in his head, wrestles with the words he’s never said, the doubts he’s never shared, the secret guilt and weakness. Once they’re off his tongue he won’t be able to recall them; will never be as impenetrable and regal as he once was. He will be a private man with a king’s cares, vested with the authority of a king, but a private man only. And yet all men must be humble before death, and yet he is almost unwilling to allow that vulnerability. And what if he recovers? He will not: he knows from the weight in his limbs, the cloud in his mind, the blood, and the fever. 

The priest is watching him carefully. With effort, he refocuses his eyes and mind, listening to the formulas. 

Sins. Henry has never forgotten how bitterly his men spoke before Agincourt, Bardolph swinging from a noose in the rain, Falstaff turning away into a dark London street. All were necessary and all were painful, but that’s what courage is for. They’ve never troubled him until now.

“I had the captives killed after our victory,” he says, and bites off justification. “My friends – carousers, and oh, I didn’t know how to change the way I had to – so I was colder because I loved them once. I,” he stops, plunges on. “I came to France for my own power, my glory, my crown. Politics, not justice. I led men to their deaths for my pride and security.” Why should he have to admit this, why? He is the King, and kings make choice. Kings rule. This is ruling. But good kings are not always good men, and Henry suddenly, overwhelmingly, wants to have been a good man. Fear burns his lungs. If he has been wrong all these years…

“And lust.” But he will not elaborate on lust. “Selfishness and pride,” he repeats. “Lust. Those things. That’s all.” 

He can’t look at the priest. He really is going to die, he thinks. He, Harry le Roy, and he is lying on his back in a tent just waiting for it. Tears throbs behind his eyes. The priest says words; the priest anoints him. The priest is gone, and Henry is left alone and afraid. If only there was some action he could take, then he would feel better. In control. The men. He should be out with the men, spreading maps, planning his next move with his uncle. 

Dear Exeter. Henry has never known anyone quite as faithful, as loving, as giving – and yet unwilling to see it as an extraordinary goodness. He deserves better than to play nurse to a dying king, to bury a brother and then a nephew and to go home to support an infant king: his fourth. But what else would he do? Exeter would be wasted as a minor baron – and Henry’s mind clanks into motion again – calculating people. 

“Let me live,” he whispers to God; if only God would listen. “I’ve always given you the glory. Let me live and see my son grown and England safe. I won’t be so – striving. Cruel.” Deals with the powers rarely work. Henry knows he is foolish to try.  
He thinks, I was happy leading my men, for the most part. What’s wrong now, what is this small dragon curled behind my breast bone? What am I longing for?

He wonders if he has ever loved. Half delirious, with shadows looming and shifting blood-red against the fabric of his tent, reaching their many-tentacled arms to twist him, he remembers the last time he held Scrope: bearing him to the floor in grief and rage, and the feeling of the man’s temple under his thumb. Before that, there was Scrope’s skin under his hands. Katherine’s long, fine hair whisks against Henry’s cheek. Falstaff’s homelike solidity claps him on the back. His heart aches in his chest, but he is too weak to cry. Henry refuses to cower away from the monsters coiled in the corners of his eyes, but they are restive and his sword is too heavy to lift…

Montjoy arrives in the camp as the men are lighting torches. A priest, leaving the inner circle of tents, nods to him; he recognizes the man from his many years coming and going between English and French. Exeter is waiting for him when he swings down from his horse. Together, they pace along the avenue of pavilions to the King’s: brightest of all, even in the dusk. 

“If I may see his Grace…?”

“Humph. He’s always liked you, Montjoy. Even if I wanted to keep you out, I couldn’t.”

“Excuse my boldness, my Lord,” says Montjoy, risking his diplomatic capital on an instinct, “but you’ve always trusted me. And I only care for the King’s wellbeing. As do you.”

“Cocky Frenchman,” Exeter chuckles, but there is an undertone of pain in his voice. “Hurry in to him.”

Montjoy pushes aside the flap, heart pounding with an emotion he rarely names. He has treated with kings at the head of huge armies, ridden with Saracens and been robbed on the pilgrimage roads, and yet he’s never been so afraid of what waits for him.  
Henry – Harry England, their bright lion, their shining sword, commanding even in silence – is curled on the bed, asleep. He is very pale and clammy, and as Montjoy approaches the bed he mutters something. Montjoy hears the fear in the King’s voice though not his words. 

You do not under any circumstances, except by His Grace’s direct command, touch the King. Montjoy freezes, hand half extended to catch up Henry’s. He steps back and listens to the low hum and stamp of men and horses outside and to Henry’s painfully shallow, ragged breathing. He thinks of Exeter’s fierce loyalty, of Henry’s courage and dignity on the eve of battle and in the face of insult. Montjoy has never had a wife or children and no parents, either, these past twenty years. King Charles is insane, his nation subjugated, the French nobility still decimated nearly a decade after Agincourt. And here is Henry, the key to it all, somewhere between life and death. There is no question of value.

Montjoy drops to his knees by Henry’s bed, takes the King’s callused hand in his, and kisses it. Oh, he’s wanted to do this for a long time. He relishes his closeness to the man, the release of years of hidden affection – and love. And desire. It has always been impossible, Montjoy thinks, but still: why must I only do this now that it’s too late for Henry to respond? This will have to suffice: a tiny, private, one sided farewell by a man who speaks with the voice of a vanishing country for a man who is a country. Tears leak through Montjoy’s eyelashes. 

Henry closes his hand on Montjoy’s. The herald starts, his eyes snapping open, and holds very still under a wave of fragile, exhilarating, terrifying hope. 

“Dear Montjoy,” whispers Henry. “You came.”

“I…” I always come, he wants to say. I will always come for you. “I love you, my liege. I came as soon as I heard.” He can’t breathe for the enormity of what he has just said. I’m a Frenchman. This isn’t my king. Love makes me do wild things. And, louder than his other thoughts, triumphant and heart-pounding in its finality: I told him. Henry knows.

“Thank you,” says the King. His voice is as warm as Montjoy remembers, but much weaker. The blond hair is flattened with sweat, and his eyes are dull; as if Henry has been fighting a battle. In a sense he has: against himself. “You never sneered when you delivered your messages. I don’t think you know how noble you are. I’ve seen you negotiate, you’re fearsomely smart.” 

Montjoy panics silently. Why is Henry saying this? Is this how he will rebuff me?

“If I was well, I’d court you.” Henry laughs, wheezing with the little air he has. It’s an awful sound and it brings Death into the tent from where he’d been pushed outside for a few moments. Death looks impatient; Montjoy can glimpse him out of the corner of his eye, but it’s clear from Henry’s face that Henry can really see him. It’s just as clear that he’s ignoring the spectre, so with an effort, Montjoy does too.

Emboldened, Montjoy looks Henry in the eye. “I’ve already been courted, he says. Quite finely. You, in your armor, with your speeches and your defiance. Magnanimous in victory.” But his voice wavers on the last compliment, and Henry knows why: it was a mistake for both of them. 

“I’m sorry,” the King says, so plainly that Montjoy is shocked. “That’s not how a good knight wins.” A silence. “I confessed today.”

The last rites. Confession. But of course, if Death’s really at hand. And so it’s been acknowledged again. The tent feels a little stuffier. Death takes a step closer. 

“And your humility,” says Montjoy, not joking now if he ever was. “Care for your people. All the qualities I’ve seen you doubt in yourself.”

“They fail sometimes.”

“Great king.” Henry stiffens in surprise. “Brave, beautiful man. Sleep well. I’m – lucky to have known you.”

“Gentle herald. I wish I was free to give you the love you deserve. I don’t even know your friends. Can you be happy? You’re such a bright soul.” This is Henry’s prerogative: to kiss Montjoy. He takes it, clinging to Montjoy’s tunic with his last strength. Montjoy can feel his chest filling and expanding with love. He holds the King with all the tenderness he can muster. When they break apart reluctantly, he smooths Henry’s hair back from his eyes and strokes his cheek. 

“I love you,” croaks Henry. “Call Exeter. Stay.”

Lightly and with dread, Montjoy opens the tent flap and beckons a stricken-looking Exeter in. As Exeter moves forward, Montjoy slips into the tent’s shadows, carefully remaining in Henry’s line of sight. His face is diplomatically blank and correct towards to the King’s uncle. 

Exeter kneels at Henry’s bedside as Henry carefully removes his signet ring and folds it into his uncle’s hand: care for my son and my country. He murmurs a few words which Montjoy tries not to hear, and gruff, bearded Exeter weeps silently. 

Exeter opens the tent to more nobles: they file around his bed, watching like hungry hawks: a king dies surrounded by the ceremony with which he is born. Montjoy, in the shadows, locks eyes with Henry. Exeter takes up station at the foot of the bed. A priest, who slipped in with the others, murmurs a prayer and lights incense. Henry closes his eyes and composes himself regally on the bed. In front of the nobles, he is not afraid, because he has this to cling to: his care and his duty. 

Even Death, stepping past Montjoy, is stately. 

Henry dies on an exhaled breath. What difference does it make whether a man dies breathing in or out, wonders Montjoy. The exhale is finality. It is peace. It is repose. It is Henry, king in body and soul, majestic despite the ignominious disease that felled him.

At the foot of the bed, Exeter cries, “Vivat Rex!” He is honouring Henry’s son. The assembled nobles kneel in a clank of chainmail and a rustle of silk and Montjoy with them, though his station as envoy of another country does not absolutely demand it. Later, he will be able to report to the French king on his new superior: a baby will be crowned king of England and France. 

He won’t stay the night, despite Exeter’s gracious offer of lodging. Montjoy needs to be on the road, away from people for a while. Montjoy walks into the night, wandering past soldiers’ tents and imagining how Henry did the same. Great king. He is stunned at his dreams and dread coming true: Henry’s love and Henry’s death. They could never have been lovers, he thinks, but this was a cruel irony. Still, he is buoyed by Henry’s words and kiss. As he turns his back on the English camp and rides towards a country coiling for war, he feels a strange peace.


End file.
